Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.

My wife and I met in Bucharest over 3 years ago, and almost immediately married in Bucharest. Soon thereafter we began the pursuit of her visa into the US via an online company that appears to have a couple of names. Those names are Fiancee Visas, and/or Allan S. Lolly and associates. Allan S. Lolly is the named partner representing this firm Fiancee Visas that specializes in immigration. When you google “Fiancee Visas” or combinations of those words you will inevitably see 1-800-fianceevisas, Fiancee Visas, or Allan S. Lolly and associates, so naturally, we called them, compared some rates, and decided to foot the bill to proceed forward.

Soon after, we received our “welcome” package, which of course included a list of all the documents we will need to include in our return package in order for a proper submission to the government of the US and so forth for my wife’s visa.

We completed the package, and “fedex’d” it out to our case manager, or paralegal, assigned to our case. We were off and running… or so we thought.

After a couple of days, we received confirmation that our package was received and we were good to go. I had qualified with flying colors to be my wife’s “sponsor” into the US, and we should have our interview in the not to distant future.

Then it began… after a while we received communication from our “new” case worker at Allan S. Lolly law firm, that introduced themselves and informed us they would be handling our case from here on out. No clue why this happened but we went with it. This new caseworker then proceeded to ask us for additional documentation… documentation she had yet to “receive”. Funny thing was, we had already submitted some of this information (copies of passports included) to the prior caseworker. Wonder what happened to our important, not to mention confidential, documentation? We questioned the necessity of this re-submission of information, stalled a little to do some research, and ultimately resubmitted it via email this time (which took some persuasion to do as some docs required our original signature). So the caseworker had what she needed and now we were good to go… again.

Time for a third caseworker from Allan S. Lolly to introduce themselves to us and our case. This time the request for more documents threw up a lott of red flags, and my wife and I had our first “sinking” feeling, as we now realized we were in the middle of “being had”. We paid them their money already… we now became someone to “deal” with rather than a client. The person becomes a number. Suffice to say, we did not continue to submit “further documentation” as we were now putting ourselves at risk.

Additionally, this period of “caseworker transition” caused such long and inappropriate delays, that I was forced to relocate near permanently to Romania to be with my new family. Any reasonable person would do the same. In doing so, and amidst the economic crisis, it was necessary for me to “close up shop” and cut my losses with a real estate business in the US. This (over a year into the Visa Process) caused me to no longer meet the USA’s financial requirements to be my own wife’s sponsor into the US. Thank you Allan S. Lolly for not doing your job when you had the opportunity! Allan S. Lolly did apologize for the delays in some emails, stating that it was indeed unacceptable delays, and he even offered to pay for the DHL costs to send yet another package of docs from Bucharest this time. Thanks a bunch.

It was not too long after these “switcheroos” that I became somewhat more “forceful” in my demands that they treat me as a client, which means responding to emails in a timely fashion, locating the documents that I said I had submitted, and answering my questions instead of answering questions they “thought” I asked. Time went by and still nothing except apology letters that passively put the blame on us, as well as excuses of why the caseworkers at Allan S. Lolly were not answering my emails. They were out of the office at the time as it stated on their outgoing auto-reply messages. How convenient.

Finally, we had had enough, we had gotten nowhere with this firm. We had the slight indication that they may have filed some paperwork to immigration on our behalf (a strange forwarded “receipt” email) which is disappointing because the lack of proper communication and their prior loss of our docs insured they could not have submitted a complete package. Or could they have? We’ll never know. We finally asked Allan S. Lolly and his firm for a refund of our hard earned money that we paid for this “service”.

After many emails over yet another 2 month period in which we asked for a refund, the response and communication seemed to pick up pace a bit. But no mention of the refund… just how we could be “satisfied” as customers. This included the passive apologies, including throwing the paralegals “under the bus” as well as Allan’s “personal” attention to our matter, where he would review our case. Good. We needed our case reviewed. Its About time. During this “review” of our case, Mr. Lolly replied to us in emails where he stated that everything should be squared away and again, an apology, and that if I had any delays in dealing with my caseworker to contact him personally. Of course he doesn’t pick up his phone. Well, as they had completely dodged my request for a refund, I pushed harder. Finally this story came to a head this month when Allan S. Lolly forwarded me an email his bookkeeper had emailed him that stated their firm had issued me a refund already back in October! Neither my wife and I nor Allan S. Lolly were aware that this refund had taken place. To make matters worse, this “surprise” refund was issued to a debit card that had been cancelled years prior, and was also tied to a closed bank account! Are there still companies out there that don’t re-confirm a financial transaction with customers prior to making said transaction? Apparently.. yes.

My wife and I were outraged. They just gave our money to a bank, that no surprise, was more than happy to accept the transaction. Now Allan S. Lolly has essentially handed our refund to a perfect stranger. I sent off another series of complaint emails, attempting to get them to “step up to the plate” and take responsibility, and issue my refund TO ME, however the best they could do was reinforce the fact that they had already issued a refund to some random bank that, because I used to bank with them 2 and a half years prior was reason enough to wash their hands in any responsible. Allan S. Lolly graciously offered to let me call this bank (whom let me reiterate again I am not a customer of) and sort out his firms problem.

Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.

AUTHOR: Trevor - (United States of America)

SUBMITTED: Wednesday, March 02, 2011

POSTED: Wednesday, March 02, 2011

This matter currently remains unresolved. I have not received my refund as there is a difference between being issued a refund and receiving a refund. I was very, very clear in my complaint. I have not received my refund. Allan Lolly's firm only says they have issued me a refund, and additionally I made it very clear that they say the refund was issued inappropriately to a bank I no longer bank with.

The fact of the matter is Allan S Lolly & Associates (or Holmes & Lolly) handled this case badly. I am not expecting them to be perfect, as nobody or no company is, however they have not even tried to fix the mistake. They are trying to blame it on me.

It appears that I am not the only one that Allan Lolly has done this to. There are others out there that have had similar problems both before and after I hired this firm. Unfortunately none of this would have happened to me had I done my research better from the very beginning. I would not have chosen this firm.

Their response of me finding employment in the US is ridiculous, as that is only one way to qualify for a visa, but most important of all is the fact that I qualified with flying colors when I retained the firm and well into the process. I moved out of the US after 2 years of their nonsense because I did not want to be away from my wife and family any longer.

The communication problem was rests squarely with Allan Lolly's firm. They switched me between THREE different "experienced" case workers within first few months alone. If the case loads were too great for them they should not have been accepting more cases. Allan Lolly's firm even admits in their rebuttal to having problems with case loads. This was clearly the beginning of their communication breakdown. This law firm changed names (according to them the partners split and some staff went with one partner and some staff went with the other. Who knows how they split up the clients). As a result of this, all communications I had with them, written or otherwise was now divided between these locations. The average response time to my emails was more than what would be considered appropriate. They had me send in the same documents over and over again so it was like starting over from the beginning with each new case worker.

The bottom line is I hired them to assist me in filing papers. Allan Lolly's firm still chooses to misunderstand the reasoning for my complaints. They think this is about us not receiving our visa. It is not. This is about them mishandling my case from start to finish. At this point they are obviously trying to shut me up. My wife and I were harmed greatly throughout this ordeal that Allan Lolly's firm created and I am now trying to help others by letting them know what happened to me. Others should be able to have this information when deciding whether or not to use Allan S Lolly & Associates,1-800-usa-immigration, FianceeVisas.com, or whatever their name is today.

AUTHOR: Strong Island NY - (United States of America)

Trevor has been posting in many places
under various nicknames. His story has several inconsistencies and has been
altered in various places that he's posted.

The fact of the matter is that he was issued a refund (it's in his complaint)
even though he was not entitled to one under the contract he signed. He
received the same services that were successful to more than 10,000 other
individuals including myself.

Proper global business procedure was conducted in the issuing of his refund. A
refund is returned in the same form that payment was made. If he paid using a
card that was canceled years prior (as is his claim), and the bank accepted the
refund, then his issue is to go after that bank, not try to run a smear
campaign to extort additional funds from Allan S. Lolly & Associates.

A comment is made of the fact that three
assistants worked on his case, which somehow implies this is a bad
thing. There are times when the office must redistribute case loads.
Case
redistribution is more noticeable for those clients whose cases remain
open for
many months. It is not unusual for an experienced case manager to fill
in
temporarily during transition. Communications are logged, so it was easy
to audit the case file and identify that the communication breakdown was
caused
by Trevor.

The comments below are the results of the case audit:

The essential problem is that Trevor must return to the
U.S. and become employed in order to complete case processing. There was
an unfortunate communication breakdown early on. Trevor blames our
office for the breakdown, but we disagree. An audit of the case file
reveals the problem.

Trevor moved overseas and was no longer able to meet
income guidelines. He had no interest in returning to the U.S. There are only a few ways to qualify financially to immigrate a foreigner to
the U.S. In this case, his only option is to return to the U.S. and
obtain employment. Even stable earnings of $10 per hour can be enough to
meet income guidelines.

Instead of seeking employment, Trevor chose to complain
about services and demanded a refund. Under the circumstance, there is no
way to continue case processing unless Trevor becomes employed. it
was best to agree to the demand for refund and sever ties. A refund was
issued by our bookkeeper according to the same manner as payment was made: credit card. The bank accepted the return credit. Services were
terminated. Trevor needs to speak with his bank.

Corporate Advocacy Program: The best way to manage and repair your business reputation. Hiding negative complaints is only a Band-Aid. Consumers want to see how businesses take care of business. All businesses will get complaints. How those businesses take care of those complaints is what separates good businesses from bad businesses.